Catholic Jesuit head Adolfo Panchon announced his resignation this week after the International Common Law Court of Justice in Brussels linked him to Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult ceremonies. For the last month five judges have “examined numerous eyewitnesses and Vatican archival documentation that clearly link Pachon, Pope Francis, former Pope Ratzinger and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to the ritual rape and killing of children as recently as 2010″ according to yesterday’s bulletin from the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State. Last month the ITCCS began prosecuting the case before the five international judges and 27 jury members. Continue reading »

Pontiff’s comments spark flurry of speculation about alleged ‘bunga bunga’ scene in the Holy See

A tide of lurid speculation, questionable accusations and possible blackmail attempts is buffeting the Vatican following Pope Francis’s claim that he is preparing to tackle a gay lobby secretly at work behind the Holy See’s walls.

The new pope’s private comments to a group of visiting South American churchmen, which caused a sensation when they appeared on a religious website last week, prompted blushes in the Vatican and unleashed feverish gossip in Rome regarding the contents of a report on Vatican infighting prepared last year for Francis’s predecessor, Joseph Ratzinger.

On his retirement in February, Ratzinger handed his Argentine successor the dossier, which reportedly describes a lobby of gay, senior churchmen inside the Vatican, running a network of patronage while fighting off blackmailers.

The other day, I imagined members of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei (the money guys) gathering in a quiet sanctuary to discuss the current financial meltdown in the Catholic Church and the perfect Pope to help evolve their business model and lead them into a new and wealth building period.

Pope Benedict’s decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

“His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn’t have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else,” said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“It is absolutely necessary” that he stays in the Vatican, said the source, adding that Benedict should have a “dignified existence” in his remaining years.

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican was drawn into a new controversy Friday after acknowledging that its bank’s new president is also chairman of a shipbuilder making warships — a significant conflict for an institution that has long shunned ties to military manufacturing.

The Vatican announced to great fanfare that Pope Benedict XVI had signed off on one of the last major appointments of his papacy, approving Ernst von Freyberg as president of the Vatican’s bank, officially known as the Institute for Religious Works.

The Vatican spokesman was caught off-guard, though, when a journalist noted that the German shipbuilder von Freyberg chairs, Blohm + Voss, is known for its military ship construction.

Pope Benedict XVI ‘knew more about clergy sex crimes than anyone else in church yet did little to protect children’, say critics

For the legions of people whose childhoods and adult lives were wrecked by sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy, Pope Benedict XVI is an unloved pontiff who will not be missed.

Victims of the epidemic of sex- and child-abuse scandals that erupted under Benedict’s papacy reacted bitterly to his resignation, either charging the outgoing pontiff with being directly complicit in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the thousands of paedophilia cases that have come to light over the past three years, or with failing to stand up to reactionary elements in the church resolved to keep the scandals under wraps.

From Benedict’s native Germany to the USA, abuse victims and campaigners criticised an eight-year papacy that struggled to cope with the flood of disclosures of crimes and abuse rampant for decades within the church. Norbert Denef, of the NetworkB group of German abuse victims, said: “The rule of law is more important than a new pope.”

Denef, 64, from the Baltic coast of north Germany, was abused as a boy by his local priest for six years. In 2003, Denef took his case to the bishop of Magdeburg. He was offered €25,000 (then £17,000) in return for a signed pledge of silence about what he suffered as a six-year-old boy. He then raised the issue with the Vatican and received a letter that said Pope John Paul II would pray for him so that Denef could forgive his molester.

“We won’t miss this pope,” said Denef. He likened the Vatican’s treatment of the molestation disclosures to “mafia-style organised crime rings”.Continue reading »

Rome — The spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, surprised the world Monday by saying he will resign at the end of the month “because of advanced age.”

It’s the first time a pope has stepped down in nearly 600 years.

“Strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” said Benedict, 85, according to the Vatican.

The news startled and shocked the Catholic world and led to frenzied speculation about who would replace him.

Few passing London tourists would ever guess that the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James’s Square and Pall Mall.

But these office blocks in one of London’s most expensive districts are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by the Vatican.

Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church’s international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.

Since then the international value of Mussolini’s nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James’s Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland.

Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

The world’s total land mass consists of 36.8 billion acres of inhabitable land.

An incredible 21 percent of this land is owned by a short list of landowners, according to The New Statesman.

Of course that includes the Queen of England, who nominally owns places like Canada and Australia. The list also includes American billionaires like Ted Turner and the Irving family.

#15 Ted Turner

Land: Acreage totaling over 2 million. In The United States, he owns thousands of square miles of hunting grounds in Georgia and Montana. He also has roughly 11,000 acres of land in the Patagonia region of Argentina.

Background: Turner, an iconic America entrepreneur founded the Turner Broadcasting System that launched CNN and several others before being sold to Time Warner for yet another Turner fortune. The eccentric Turner is an avowed outdoorsman and has acquired land to use in his passion for fishing and hunting.

Land: Basically… Qatar. The King owns the country and all 4,415 miles of it. Background: Bin Khalifa has a been a modernizing voice and Western-friendly face in the Middle East since taking the throne in 1995.

Land: The approximately 3.6 million acres of land held in Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia make the Irvings the largest landowners in those states and provinces.Background: As heirs to the J.D. Irving Group of Companies fortune, the three Canadian brothers also inherited thousands of square miles of forest land that the company uses as paper and pulp materials in one part of their very diversified business portfolio. Continue reading »

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Paolo Gabriele was always a reserved, almost shy man, as his position required. He had access to the most private rooms in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace – Pope Benedict’s apartment.

But what could have prompted the pope’s butler, who was formally charged by Vatican magistrates on Saturday with illegal possession of secret documents, to betray the man who trusted him?

Was it money? Probably not.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist who revealed some of the leaked documents alleging corruption in the Vatican and internal conflict over the role of the Vatican bank, declines to reveal his sources but insists he gave no money to them.

Nuzzi, a respected journalist with a good track record whose book “His Holiness” contains some of the allegations, says those who gave him the documents were devout people “genuinely concerned about the Catholic Church” who wanted to expose corruption.

The 46-year-old Gabriele, facing up to 30 years in prison if convicted, lives in a comfortable apartment in the Vatican with his wife and three children, and is said by all who knew him to be very religious.

While Vatican employees do not receive large salaries, they do enjoy benefits such as low rent, no income tax, and cheap food and petrol at the commissaries of the 108-acre city-state.

May 24 (Reuters) – The Vatican bank’s board of directors voted unanimously on Thursday to oust President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and will seek to renew the lender’s ties with the world’s financial community, a statement from the Holy See said.

The board voted no confidence in Gotti Tedeschi “for not carrying out various fundamental functions of his office,” the Vatican said without giving details.

A new president will be hired to renew relataions with the international banking community, it said. The statement confirmed an earlier report from a senior Vatican source.

The Vatican bank, whose reputation took a blow last year over an investigation into money laundering, has fired Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi after a tenure stained by a financial scandal.

In a vote of no-confidence, the board of directors unanimously agreed to remove Tedeschi, a Banco Santander SA banker who took the job in 2009, from his post for failing “to carry out various duties of primary importance,” according to a statement yesterday by Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.

“I would rather say nothing otherwise I would only have ugly words to say,” Tedeschi told reporters in Rome, according to Italian news agency Ansa.

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, former head of the Italy-Spain’s Santander bank should take account of the Vatican Bank in order and free them from Ruch shady business. But then the expert on financial ethics became even suspected to launder money, which was rejected by the Vatican. Surprisingly, he now lost the confidence of the bank board – and his office.

Although the reasons are not clear: either the Vatican once again bullied quite unholy or there is a new scandal into the house. The head of the Vatican Bank IOR, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, namely, last night resigned as a complete surprise – or he has resigned.

In the afternoon he had spoken of the Supervisory Board of the Institute unanimously mistrust. This is surprising, because Opus Dei man Gotti Tedeschi, a former chief Santander banker in Italy was as honest and true professional was only three years ago was brought in as Aufräumer for IOR.

Vatican staffers who have been leaking embarrassing letters about corruption and nepotism inside the tiny city state are to be hunted down by a crack squad of cardinals led by a senior member of the religious group Opus Dei.

Irritated by the anonymous release of documents to the press this year, Pope Benedict has named Cardinal Julian Herranz, 82, to lead a three-man team which will haul in staffers for questioning and rifle through files until they catch the perpetrators of what has been dubbed “Vatileaks”.

(THE HAGUE, Netherlands) — Clergy sex abuse victims upset that no high-ranking Roman Catholic leaders have been prosecuted for sheltering guilty priests have turned to the International Criminal Court, seeking an investigation of the pope and top Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity. The Vatican called the move a “ludicrous publicity stunt.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal group, requested the inquiry Tuesday on behalf of the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, arguing that the global church has maintained a “long-standing and pervasive system of sexual violence” despite promises to swiftly oust predators.

The Vatican’s U.S. lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, called the complaint a “ludicrous publicity stunt and a misuse of international judicial processes” in a statement to The Associated Press.

The complaint names Pope Benedict XVI, partly in his former role as leader of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2001 explicitly gained responsibility for overseeing abuse cases; Cardinal William Levada, who now leads that office; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state under Pope John Paul II; and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who now holds that post.

Ireland is squeezing the Roman Catholic Church to hand over cash and real estate toward a 1.4 billion-euro ($2 billion) child-abuse bill amid the bitterest stand-off yet seen between the Vatican and the government.

In the sharpest language an Irish leader has ever used against the church, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said last month the Vatican’s handling of the scandals has been dominated by “elitism and narcissism.”

“The relationship between the state and the Vatican has never been worse,” David Quinn, a religious commentator who is also director of the Dublin-based Iona Institute, which promotes religion in society, said in an interview. “I struggle to think of a stronger attack by a Western European leader on the church than Enda Kenny’s.”

(GENOA) — The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests.

Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. “I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,” he allegedly said.

Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics “to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred” and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.

“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.

But outraged Dublin victim Andrew Madden last night insisted that child abuse was not considered normal in the company he kept.

Mr Madden accused the Pope of not knowing that child pornography was the viewing of images of children being sexually abused, and should be named as such.

He said: “That is not normal. I don’t know what company the Pope has been keeping for the past 50 years.”